


What is it like to be a bat?

by WanderingBandurria



Series: ComfortMiniFest [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Body Image, Character Study, Chronic Pain, Coming Out, Ficlet, Fluff, Hogwarts Seventh Year, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Meta Humor, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Psychology, Soft feelings, Underage Smoking, Werewolf Transformation, implied mutual pining, parenting, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26712748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderingBandurria/pseuds/WanderingBandurria
Summary: Remus is on the shack waiting for the full moon. This might be a good time to come to terms with some things, including love, life, and family.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: ComfortMiniFest [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931170
Comments: 9
Kudos: 61





	What is it like to be a bat?

**Author's Note:**

> So this was for day eight of SwottyPotter wolfstar comfort minifest, and the theme was solitude. I really love this fic, but it's definitely a bit pretentious, which I stand by.
> 
> This deals with chronic pain and body image issues, framed from a body-neutrality perspective. There’s some underage smoking here, and an amazing Hope Lupin that enables it. It’s the 70s in here, but since we are not there, please be mindful of your tobacco consumption. 
> 
> Thanks to my beta, LikeABellThroughTheNight, who could help me with this in record time and also always gives me the sensitivity reader look out on these topics.
> 
> Lots of love to everyone dealing with things like chronic pain. Hope you might find some solace in this one. It's much softer and fluffy than it sounds.

He sits down on the battered bed, naked, watching the trees outside the window gleaming golden with the dusk sunlight. He’s alone, which feels sort of new - in the last two years, he’s usually with one of his friends by this time. Almost always there’s one of them who sneaks behind him and Pomfrey to keep him company. Whoever it is, they usually come out of the cloak after Pomfrey leaves and they talk, and talk, and talk a bit more, to get him distracted before his transformation - Peter with nervous energy jumps from topic to topic, James, always an assertive leader, picks the things that are more interesting to Remus, and Sirius talks hushedly with a sweet calmness that is reserved for the full moons, about trees, and colours, and dreams. Not the weird-funny-ones he always talks about during breakfast, but dreams that he reserves for these moments, that are full of symbolism and charged words, that make Remus feel electricity running down his back. 

But today no one jumped out from under the cloak when Pomfrey left. No one, not one minute after she was gone, nor ten. So to try to stop his racing mind, he got undressed earlier than usual, and tried to enjoy the warm afternoon.

He looks down at his thighs, his feet, his stomach. He traces with his index finger a scar that goes from his knee to his calf, and he starts humming softly. 

He doesn’t _properly_ hate his body. His body allows him to do things - he can read and he can run through the halls after a prank gone wrong, and he can pick up his wand to perform magic, which makes him very happy. His body is a body, and his hands can work, his mind can think, his eyes can read, his legs can walk. It’s not his body that works against him; his body resists the pain and the transformations and even if he already looks more battered than his 17 years, and even if his joints hurt, and his back hurts, well, it’s not because of his body. His body endures it as much as he does.

He is his body. He lives and thinks and experiences the world as his body allows him to, or so his mom had explained to him when he was younger. The fact that he can only do that as a werewolf would, well… there’s nothing really he can do about it. He _is_ a werewolf, after all. He might wallow in self-pity and guilt from time to time - _what if I hadn’t left the window open, what if I had screamed faster, what if I had gone to sleep with mom and dad as I had wanted to at the beginning of the night…_ \- but after years of working on therapy with one of his mom’s colleagues, he’s come a long way to accept that he was a kid. That maybe the adults failed, but that he’s not really guilty, even when his mind tries to convince him of the contrary. His parents were also doing the best that they could. He can live with the fact that this is what it is - at least, he feels he can live with it most of the time, and the dark, tired moments where he’s not sure he can, are scattered across the months.

He remembers his mother’s determined, strong voice telling him a few years ago about a paper written by a Muggle philosopher - or was it a psychologist? -, and he remembers how he laughed at its title to a point that he has never forgotten it - _What is it like to be a bat?,_ his mom had told him, but Remus and his father only laughed and told her that actually, they could turn her into a bat if she wanted to try. It would take some effort and some sophisticated human transfiguration, but they could do it. His mom had rolled her eyes, huffed in annoyance, and swatted at both of them on her way to the kitchen.

_What is it like to be a bat_ , he wonders. He had talked with his mom another day while having a fag - his mother had resigned herself to the fact that if Remus was going to smoke, he shouldn’t do it in hiding, so that at least they could talk about it if it was getting out of control -, and she had explained weird concepts about _phenomenology_ \- something about how the experience is constructed - and how consciousness is something complex that you can’t reduce to a single factor. How we experience life - colour, temperature, the touch of a lover, the speeding of our hearts - is just as our body allows it. I _t’s not reducing everything to electric impulses in your body, Remus,_ she had sighed when he had asked if she was basically saying that we are only a big brain with a mouth, and if she was talking about chronic pessimism, about being ultimately alone in your head. _It’s not about solipsism, darling,_ and Remus had smirked at the big words that his mother had always used. His mother had then stolen his cigarette and rolled her eyes, as the two of them did so frequently, and talked about how Muggle scientists were investigating how experience emerged as a globality and how humans, animals, _everyone_ , could only understand the world based on their own structures - how they can only _incorporate_ what they transform to their own frameworks. 

When she started talking about something called _autopoiesis_ , he was utterly lost, so his mom just laughed, squeezed his hand, and asked him about what was important in _his world_. 

He talked about Lily. He talked about Sirius, James, and Peter. He talked about how he felt sometimes like they were so in sync, that nobody would get him like they did ever again. He asked his mom if that was what she meant - if she was talking about synchrony, and weird hidden connections, and getting the other person on such a deep level, that you couldn’t understand other things sometimes.

She smiled sadly and shook her head. Remus shrugged and laughed awkwardly, and told her about being gay and hopelessly in love with Sirius Black.

His mom had choked with the smoke of the rapidly burning cigarette and then laughed in spite of herself while squeezing his hand. She asked if he was sure it was hopeless, and he had shrugged.

He asked if the fact that he was a gay werewolf was what she meant by the whole thing about perception and frameworks. 

She had nodded, sadly, and after a brief pause in which Remus lit a new cigarette, they kept talking about love, pain, and fear.

_What is it like to be a bat,_ he asks himself again, as he feels goosebumps on his back and arms. _These are my arms, this is my neck, this is my chest,_ he repeats to himself, touching each body part softly with his fingertips, while the dull ache starts to nest in the base of his skull. _These are my lips, and I can kiss a lover with them, these are my hands, and I can hug my friends with them. This is my heart, my human heart, where I am, with which I can love, and hurt, and hope,_ he thinks, as he starts to breath faster, with his fingernails getting longer, his back broadening, his bones breaking and his skin stretching, leaving space only for the pain. 

When he screams for the first time, he finds himself thinking miserably, _what is it like to be a bat_ , feeling tears rolling on his no-longer-fully-human cheeks, _I would like to know that instead of knowing this_ , just before his consciousness abandons him, giving space only to the pain, the pain and then, the wolf.

—

He wakes up with the dull morning light in his eyes. He can recognize the shape of the infirmary’s bed under his body, so he stays there, with his eyes closed. He does a quick mental check, and there’s nothing but the throbbing pain of the transformation, so he breathes in, relieved. 

_My heart, my hands, my legs,_ he thinks, before feeling a soft pull on his hand, that makes him open his eyes, slowly, groggily.

“Welcome back, Moony,” Sirius says, smiling softly at him, squeezing his hand with his fingers. Remus hums and smiles tiredly, feeling his heartbeat, his heartbeat, his, his, speeding up. “It was a good night. No incidents. We walked to a pond this time, you jumped in. So did I. Prongs got angry when you splashed mud on him. I think you tried to catch some frogs, but I don’t think you got lucky,” Sirius says, and intertwines his fingers with Remus’, _what is it like to be a frog_ , his brain asks itself, _what is it like to be a Padfoot, what is it like to be Sirius’ fingers, Sirius’ hand, Sirius’ arm, Sirius’ shoulder, Sirius’ neck, Sirius’ face._

“I’m glad,” he croaks out in the end, his voice raw and raspy, and he squeezes Sirius’ fingers back, to make sure that this is real. Sirius smiles back, and his eyes are suddenly soft and vulnerable when he pulls Remus’ hand to his mouth and kisses his knuckles. _What is it like to be Sirius’ lips, Sirius’ eyelashes, Sirius’ fingernails,_ his brain provides, while he smiles dazed.

“I have to go, but I’ll come back at lunch, yeah?” Sirius says, softly, not letting go of Remus’ hand. 

“Yeah,” Remus says, still smiling, blinking slowly, feeling tired and sleepy all the sudden. “Yeah. See you at lunch, Padfoot,” he says in a whisper, feeling his hand still warm and like it connects directly to his soul. 

He hears from another dimension the soft “see you later, Remus,” and he falls asleep surrounded by Sirius’ warm laughter.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr](https://wanderingbandurria.tumblr.com/)!


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